What is America?

Today’s theme is Providence and nations.

One of the under-explored aspects of the Gospel is that it implies groups are real.  Whereas the Old Testament was almost all about the group, Israel, with individuals being almost secondary.  And the New Testament was all about the individual salvation (modern reading) or at least about rejecting all other groups to form one ‘ur’-group, the Church (ancient reading).  Whosoever shall leave father or mother…

The full gospel synthesises these perspectives.  There is individual salvation occurring in the context of family exaltation, with lineages and nations having their own purposes and character.

Including America.  As per various scriptures and the recent preaching on religious freedom,  America and American characteristics are in some sense an operation of Providence.

So what is America?

A national soul is even fuzzier than gender is, and that is hard enough to pin down.  But lets have a shot.

Americans are ambitious, agentic, optimistic.  Very WEIRD.  Idealistic and religious but not metaphysical or mystical or symbolic or ritualistic.  High trust.  Prone to self-organization.  Sentimental.  Genial.  A bit shallow.  A bit uncultured, unsophisticated, and naive.  A bit juvenile.  Neither indigenous nor immigrant, but settler.  Along a lot of dimensions, the least European of all Europeans, and the most European of all non-European.  Along other dimensions, more European than even the Europeans.

Americans are the product of a land.  Wide open, still relatively unsettled, harsh, and beautiful.

Americans are a heritage and a history, all those who are the descendants by blood or spirit or both of those groups who set foot in Virginia in 1607, Plymouth Rock in 1620, and nurtured by a hundred streams, mainly English and British but not all, forged in Indian wars and then the revolutions, and who then went all the way to the sea.